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The Last Ride Together

859

Look at the end of work, contrast
The petty done, the undone vast,

This present of theirs with the hopeful past!
I hoped she would love me; here we ride.

What hand and brain went ever paired?
What heart alike conceived and dared?
What act proved all its thought had been?
What will but felt the fleshly screen?

We ride and I see her bosom heave.
There's many a crown for who can reach.
Ten lines, a statesman's life in each!
The flag stuck on a heap of bones,
A soldier's doing! what atones?

They scratch his name on the Abbey-stones.
My riding is better, by their leave.

What does it all mean, poet? Well,
Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell
What we felt only; you expressed
You hold things beautiful the best,

And place them in rhyme so, side by side.
'Tis something, nay 'tis much: but then,
Have you yourself what's best for men?
Are you poor, sick, old ere your time-
Nearer one whit your own sublime
Than we who never have turned a rhyme?
Sing, riding's a joy! For me, I ride.

And you, great sculptor-so, you gave
A score of years to Art, her slave,
And that's your Venus, whence we turn
To yonder girl that fords the burn!

You acquiesce, and shall I repine?
What, man of music, you grown gray
With notes and nothing else to say,
Is this your sole praise from a friend,
"Greatly his opera's strains intend,

But in music we know how fashions end!"
I gave my youth: but we ride, in fine.

Who knows what's fit for us? Had fate
Proposed bliss here should sublimate
My being-had I signed the bond-
Still one must lead some life beyond,
Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried.
This foot once planted on the goal,
This glory-garland round my soul,
Could I descry such? Try and test!
I sink back shuddering from the quest.
Earth being so good, would heaven seem best?
Now, heaven and she are beyond this ride.

And yet she has not spoke so long!
What if heaven be that, fair and strong
At life's best, with our eyes upturned
Whither life's flower is first discerned,

We, fixed so, ever should so abide?
What if we still ride on, we two,
With life forever old yet new,

Changed not in kind but in degree,
The instant made eternity,-

And heaven just prove that I and she

Ride, ride together, forever ride?

Robert Browning [1812–1889]

YOUTH AND ART

IT once might have been, once only:
We lodged in a street together,
You, a sparrow on the housetop lonely,
I, a lone she-bird of his feather.

Your trade was with sticks and clay,

You thumbed, thrust, patted, and polished,

Then laughed, "They will see some day
Smith made, and Gibson demolished."

My business was song, song, song;

I chirped, cheeped, trilled, and twittered, "Kate Brown's on the boards ere long,

And Grisi's existence embittered!"

Youth and Art

861

I earned no more by a warble

Than you by a sketch in plaster;
You wanted a piece of marble,
I needed a music-master.

We studied hard in our styles,

Chipped cach at a crust like Hindoos, For air, looked out on the tiles,

For fun, watched each other's windows.

You lounged, like a boy of the South,
Cap and blouse-nay, a bit of beard too;
Or you got it, rubbing your mouth
With fingers the clay adhered to.

And I soon managed to find

Weak points in the flower-fence facing,

Was forced to put up a blind,

And be safe in my corset-lacing.

No harm! It was not my fault

If you never turned your eye's tail up,

As I shook upon E in alt.,

Or ran the chromatic scale up:

For spring bade the sparrows pair,

And the boys and girls gave guesses,

And stalls in our street looked rare
With bulrush and water-cresses.

Why did not you pinch a flower
In a pellet of clay and fling it?
Why did not I put a power

Of thanks in a look, or sing it?

I did look, sharp as a lynx

(And yet the memory rankles), When models arrived, some minx

Tripped up-stairs, she and her ankles.

But I think I gave you as good!

"That foreign fellow,-who can know How she pays, in a playful mood,

For his tuning her that piano?"

Could you say so, and never say,

"Suppose we join hands and fortunes, And I fetch her from over the way,

Her, piano, and long tunes and short tunes"?

No, no: you would not be rash,

Nor I rasher and something over: You've to settle yet Gibson's hash, And Grisi yet lives in clover.

But you meet the Prince at the Board,
I'm queen myself at bals-paré,

I've married a rich old lord,

And you're dubbed knight and an R. A.

Each life unfulfilled, you see;

It hangs still, patchy and scrappy:
We have not sighed deep, laughed free,
Starved, feasted, despaired,-been happy.

And nobody calls you a dunce,

And people suppose me clever:

This could but have happened once,

And we missed it, lost it forever.

Robert Browning [1812-1889]

TWO IN THE CAMPAGNA

I WONDER do you feel to-day

As I have felt since, hand in hand,
We sat down on the grass, to stray
In spirit better through the land,
This morn of Rome and May?

Two in the Campagna

For me, I touched a thought, I know,
Has tantalized me many times,
(Like turns of thread the spiders throw
Mocking across our path) for rhymes
To catch at and let go.

Help me to hold it! First it left

The yellowing fennel, run to seed
There, branching from the brickwork's cleft,
Some old tomb's ruin: yonder weed

Took up the floating weft,

Where one small orange cup amassed

Five beetles,-blind and green they grope Among the honey-meal: and last,

Everywhere on the grassy slope

I traced it. Hold it fast!

The champaign with its endless fleece
Of feathery grasses everywhere!
Silence and passion, joy and peace,

And everlasting wash of air—
Rome's ghost since her decease.

Such life here, through such lengths of hours,
Such miracles performed in play,

Such primal naked forms of flowers,

Such letting Nature have her way While Heaven looks from its towers!

How say you? Let us, O my dove,
Let us be unashamed of soul,
As earth lies bare to heaven above!
How is it under our control

To love or not to love?

I would that you were all to me,

You that are just so much, no more.
Nor yours, nor mine,-nor slave nor free!
Where does the fault lie? What the core

Of the wound, since wound must be?

863

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